


A Numbers Game

by WhatSaidWho (Wildhero)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Captain Cobra Swan, F/M, Fluff, One Shot, Soulmates, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 02:26:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11682108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildhero/pseuds/WhatSaidWho
Summary: A short one shot that features Killian Jones' character progression.





	A Numbers Game

**Author's Note:**

> A little Drabble that came to me as I layed in bed. Tell me how you feel in the comments please!   
> Loosely (quite loosely) based off the AU headcanon that people age until they're 18 and then stop aging until they meet their soulmate so they can grow old together.   
> Unbetaed as per usual.

He’s stopped counting. He can’t remember the last time he celebrated a birthday. He knows in his heart—if you can even say he still has one—that he’s somewhere in the two or three hundreds, but if you asked any medical professional, they’d tell you that he’s no older than 30.

At first, he didn’t question it. His whole crew seemed to have not aged while they were on Neverland. No, it wasn’t until after he was off of the island that he realized his crew was beginning to look worn and ragged from wrinkles and worry lines and he himself looked as though not a day has passed. He couldn’t remember the last time he needed a trim for his hair or beard.

He figured it was some strange occurrence that only affected him. Maybe he drank from a different water source. Maybe he ate a different berry. Perhaps he smelled the right flower. Anyways, he counted his blessing and moved on.

So he stopped counting. He didn’t count anything anymore. Not the few people in his life that he may have once considered mates that aged and died before him. Not the women that he had in his bed to distract himself from the painful loneliness that settled deep in his heart. Not the people he killed to get the loot that he hoped would fill the ache. Not the promises that he made that he broke. He stopped counting.

Eventually, it gets to a man. Seeing everything you’ve ever loved or appreciated leaving you as you stand by, incapable to do anything but watch.

He thought about it. Magic. But as a man who has lost everything, you struggle to hold onto what you do have and what he had were his morals. Magic has done nothing but harm and he refused to believe it could help him now.

“What was the point?” he’d think while alone yet another night on a quiet ship that used to once be enough for him.

Standing alone in his barren quarters on a ship filled with the ghosts of memories, Killian Jones is broken. He screams.

 

* * *

  
Five. It’s been five years since he’s came to Storybrooke. Five birthdays celebrated with a family that he made for himself. 1,821 days that he’s known Emma. Everyday, he counts.

Everyday he wakes up feeling loved.

Everyday he wakes up feeling whole.

They tell him he’s 35 now. He tells Emma he’s really 235. He knows he’s older. She does too. They don’t say it aloud.

He has wrinkles on his forehead and lines in between his eyebrows. His eyes give away his real age now.

She cuts his hair. Henry teaches him how to use this world’s version of a straight blade to manage his beard. Without them, his hair is unruly.

He knows now, thanks to Snow and David and Robin and Regina, that it wasn’t Neverland that stopped him from aging at all. It was the promise that True Love was in his future.

She never asks about his numbers. She never asks how many has died from his hands or how many women he has bed. He doesn’t ask her her numbers as well.

Instead, they count new numbers. They count how many nights they lay awake, staring at the stars above them while they’re on the ship that once haunted him. They count how many mornings they wake up next to each other. They count the different nicknames and pet names they can come up for each other. They count the amount of times they can bring each other to ecstasy. They started counting the new numbers and the old numbers fell away, crumbling like sand.

He watches her create and build with her magic. Fix a problem before he knew it existed. Help everyone she can with a flick of her wrist.

He’s mesmerized by the white flash; Powerful and dangerous, but without harm.

“I can’t imagine my life without you,” he’d whisper to her as he tucks a stray hair behind her ear as she’s falling asleep.

Laying beside her in the room they shared together inside their house filled with memories he would never trade, Killian Jones is happy. He smiles. 


End file.
